Songs from Home

There are three Polish women at the heart of Toronto-based band Polky, and Songs from Home refers both to their homeland as well as their multicultural Canadian home. The album begins with lead vocalist Ewelina Ferenc singing over a reedy duduk drone before moving to ‘Oj Musialas’, a dance song that’s also in the repertoire of Poland’s Prusinowski Kompania. Here they slightly soften the string instrumentals with reverb, but keep an energetic wildness and explore vocal counterpoints. The music is largely folk-based and two of the tracks use Jewish themes.

The band release their debut ‘in solidarity with women and gender minorities in Poland.’ They’ve released a video of the track ‘Rain’, featuring drone shots of empty Warsaw streets in the pandemic and then the hundreds of thousands of pro-choice demonstrators in Poland’s biggest street protests since the fall of communism.

Most people are probably aware of the red lightning symbol that’s been adopted worldwide in support of the movement. I don’t hear anything in the music of ‘Rain’ that echoes the message, but the video clearly makes its point.